News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Launches UPS & FedEx Rival, P&G Cracks the Code on Marketing
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon to Launch Delivery Service for Businesses, Challenging UPS and FedEx… Drawbridge Partners with mParticle to Help Brands Deliver Personalized Experiences… Liftoff Dating App Report Shows Cold Seasons’ User Behavior and Geographic Trends…
Commentary
Ultra Local, Simplicity, Ego Lead the Way in 2011
I thought I’d wait for the smoke to clear on all the 2011 tech prognostications before filing a few of my own. These are actually a bit less predictions than bankable trends. Their focus is on mobile but also the things around the edges that will make mobile-local interesting, scary, useful, intrusive and wonderful in the coming 363 days.
Simple Gets Simpler: Successful online and mobile experiences will become much closer to being intuitive than ever before, anticipating not the geek’s natural next clicks but the average Jane’s. I’m not talking about Web 2.X, with its big buttons, oversize input boxes and Ajax popovers but rather one action to the next dictated by the glassy smoothness of an inhale following and exhale. This is true behavioral anticipation leaving no room for confusion and no time for pause. Simple = successful…
7 Things I Want From My Phone for Christmas
I’m a little weary of the “Holiday Tech Stuff” roundups, as I suspect are you, so let’s just leap right into what I’d demand from Cell-a-Claus and his App Elves, were he to ask.
I’ve been a goo… not horrible guy this year, Cell-a, really. And I’m not asking for anything current technology would not permit. So please bring me the following:
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‘Location’ is at Apple’s iPhone Core (Patently Apple)
The site Patently Apple has a rather interesting observation about some of the recent patent filings by Apple related to its iPhone. According to PA via records it has surface Apple is attacking the big and the small around geolocation, with technological tweaks and improvements (that are actually
quite complex) and practical setups to solving common human needs like “what am I about to pass on my trip to grandma’s that I might be interested in?”…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Ebay Buys Braintree, Square’s Next Move
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… EBay Buys Braintree, a Payments Start-Up (New York Times)… Square’s Next Move: Jump On A Platform (ReadWrite)… Clinkle Becomes A Tech Celebrity Magnet, Landing Richard Branson As An Investor (Clinkle)…
Too Many Local Journalists Are Missing The Big Story: Revenue
In the new digital era, which requires journalists to widen their lens far beyond the next big story, they are beginning to channel their passion into how to engage users, embrace technology and examine the limitations of their traditional “Fourth Estate” role is in the community. All good. But there’s one area where local journalists have yet to bring the full measure of their passion — revenue.
Case Study: Blimpie Closes the Loop With New Mobile Gaming App
“For a restaurant company like ours, millenials are hugely important,” says Steve Evans, vice president of marketing at Blimpie, the quick-serve restaurant with nearly 1,000 franchise locations. “They tend to be a huge customer base for years to come, and all the research that we’ve seen shows consumers make their brand choices — and their brand loyalty — early on in life. If you get people in their earlier years, they’re still open to change.”
Street Fight Daily: Fake Yelp Reviews Rise, Yahoo Gives Maps A Facelift
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… A Whopping 20% Of Yelp Reviews Are Fake (MarketWatch)… Surprise: Yahoo Maps Gets A Facelift, New Features (SearchEngineLand)… Hyperlocal Power: Urban Compass Raises $20M At A $150M Valuation; Adds Advance Publications And Marc Benioff As Investors (TechCrunch)…
Digital First Partners With PaperG For Digital Ads
Digital First Media has teamed up with PaperG to build custom multi-device advertising campaigns for both desktop and mobile. The partnership allows PaperG, which automates display advertising campaigns for small businesses, to provide Digital First Media’s network of nearly 1,000 sales representatives with a full-service platform ad solution for mobile and desktop…
The Local Sharing Economy Is Here (But Scale Will Prove Difficult)
Every iteration of things that can be shared, from baby clothes to power boats, has been picked through by college students who have been steeped in the gospel of Zuck and turned into a local service set to scale. The problem, however, is that almost every startup gets stuck at city one. The reason? If the sharing requires some sort of physical exchange of goods or services, then it requires the commitment of two people who live close to each other to complete transaction. And they need to find each other even though the just-launched app won’t reach critical mass for a long time…
Mobile Is Huge — But Two Key Elements Could Slow Its Growth
We in the media think we’re in the information business, when the reality is that we’re very much in the advertising business, and advertising is in disruption right now. In their effort to influence and produce results, marketers are simply unable to demonstrate even a modicum of restraint when it comes to the line between useful and nuisance.
Street Fight Daily: Square and Intuit Play Nice, Confidence Crisis With Reviews
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Square and Intuit Play Nice With New QuickBooks Integration (AllThingsD)… Confidence Crisis: 40 Percent Don’t Trust Online Reviews (MarketingLand)… Finding a Model for Sac Press by Looking at The Hawaii Independent (ScramentoPress)…
Study: Mobile Users More Willing to Share Location Than Browsing History
When it comes to mobile marketing, consumers are more willing to share the places they go in the real-world with brands than the websites they visit, according to a new study conducted by Millward Brown. The research, which surveyed 1,572 consumers who have downloaded a mobile app in the past year, found that 43% of respondents were willing to share their location with companies compared to one of every ten who said they would share their browser history…
5 Tools for Building a Community Marketplace
With their built-in audiences already in place, hyperlocal publications are able to easily overcome one of the biggest obstacles to getting a community marketplace off the ground. However, technical challenges still remain, and building a marketplace from scratch can be extraordinarily time consuming and expensive. Now, a handful of vendors are offering a solution, providing publishers with the tools they need to create custom marketplaces that can be up and running in a matter of days…
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